Something More
by Black-Neko-Chan
Summary: When the spirit of the Ring comes out of its prison and manifests itself as a person, Ryou does not know what to do. He does not know whether to run and scream for help, or to be silent and try his best to get out of this situation alive. All he is certain of is that nothing good can possibly come from this.


So this fic came out of two random lines I thought of while writing ATF, for those of you who know what that is. They were "Ryou cannot find it in himself to hate Bakura, not after everything he knows the spirit has been through." and "Ryou's cooking is more than a bit lacking, but he feeds Bakura with a happy expression on his face every time. Bakura, for his part, always manages to stomach it. Theirs is an unusual truce even now, but it is a truce all the same, and neither wants to upset the delicate balance of it." So other than those two lines, I really had no idea what this was going to turn out as. I like it though. I guess you could call it Tendershipping, but I really wasn't planning on that.

**Disclaimer:** No matter how many fanfics I write, I still don't own Yu-Gi-Oh.

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When the spirit of the Ring comes out of its prison and manifests itself as a person, Ryou does not know what to do. He has been trying to sleep when the occurrence happens—one of the rare occasions where he is given free reign of his body long enough to do so. The Ring begins to glow as it does before he usually finds his presence locked away in his soul room, and his body under control of the parasite within it. Only this time, Ryou remains in control of his body. The spirit never wrests it away from him. Instead, he turns onto his side and finds another body lying beside him.

The spirit is pale, skinny and naked. Ryou thinks the huge shudders wracking his form are the beginnings of a maniacal laugh forming in his throat. But when the sadistic sound never comes bursting forth, Ryou is forced to recognize the movements as trembling. The idea is so ludicrous that he rejects it the moment it presents itself. But the longer Ryou lies there in his panic-stricken paralysis, the more he is forced to put it under consideration.

He first thinks about calling Yuugi. Yuugi will know what to do here. He leaves the bed slowly, afraid that his movements will attract the attention of the other in the bed. They do. Before he can take a step in the direction of the phone, there is a clawed hand grabbing his arm and pulling him in near.

The spirit smells like death. And when it raises its head and looks Ryou in the eye, it seems to the terrified boy that it _is_ death. He tries to back away almost immediately and break free of the outstretched hand.

He is free. He can go to the phone. But Ryou does not move. There is something in its eyes, something that speaks to Ryou more than the frail, shaking body ever could. Ryou backs away slowly, but does not head for the living room like he knows he should. He locks himself away in his bathroom for the rest of the night and tries to convince himself of something. In the morning, he leaves the bathroom and sets out to nurse the spirit back to health.

00000

The spirit is weak and sick. Ryou does not know how it has gotten to be like this, because he cannot hold a conversation with it for more than a few words before it bursts out into wet-sounding coughs. Not that Ryou has any plans for _conversing_ with the thing, but he would like to know how it has come to possess its own body.

The only thing that prevents him from running to the phone and pleading with Yuugi for help is how _weak_ the spirit is. Ryou is still terrified of it and cannot sleep at night without worrying that he will wake up and see it above him. But the spirit is so weak that it cannot move from the couch Ryou has placed it on, or even remain awake for more than a few hours of the day. It is infantile. Ryou must feed it and help it get to wherever it needs to go. When it sleeps it curls itself up into a ball, like their roles are reversed and it is the one that has something to fear.

Ryou does not really know why he helps to nurse the creature back to health, but he does it anyways. Perhaps it's because it still looks like him, though the resemblance repulses him every time he looks for too long and starts to note all of the similarities between the two of them instead of the differences. Maybe it's just his destiny to be taken advantage of. Mostly he doesn't question it too much, because he doesn't want to think that he isn't able to go against the one who frightens him so, even weak and crippled as it is.

00000

The first time Ryou wakes up and sees the spirit walking around on its own, he nearly has a heart attack. He'd realized that it was getting better, but not this quickly, not quickly enough so that it could have killed Ryou in his sleep and he would have been none the wiser.

Ryou runs and hides in the bathroom.

It is pathetic and he feels ashamed to be so scared and nervous, but there's a bit difference between hearing and feeling the spirit as a voice in his head and seeing it up and walking around. While it had been sick and helpless, Ryou had been able to push away his fear, or at least contain it deep enough so that he could be in the thing's presence. Now he expects it to come at him with the Sennen Ring that appeared round its neck, though Ryou _knows_ he hid the accursed thing at the bottom of his sock drawer. He stares at the door with insurmountable terror and expects to see the beast come breaking through it.

Except that doesn't ever happen, though Ryou can hear the spirit walking around outside the door. He can hear it prowl through the apartment it knows so well only because it has possessed Ryou enough times to learn the location of everything, and though the spirit is no longer inside him, the link between them still exists, and Ryou knows that it knows where he is. But it does not ever come forward.

Eventually Ryou of course has to leave the bathroom. It has been a few hours, but he does this out of curiosity and not necessity. The quiet has finally returned and Ryou helps it to exist by tip-toeing lightly throughout his own home. He reaches the living room and sees the spirit looking wholly relaxed on the couch, unperturbed by his arrival.

"I was wondering when you were going to come out," it says. "You know I wasn't going to bite you."

00000

The first few days are the hardest. It takes a lot to tempt Ryou to get out of his bed in the morning knowing that the spirit is there, much less go anywhere near the thing. It does not do anything to harm him. It does not even glance in his direction when he happens to leave the safety of his room for necessities. It is not even altogether feeling better, for there have been several instances where Ryou has overheard it coughing and wheezing when it has expanded too much of its energy. Ryou does not go out to help it. Though it has not harmed him yet, the chains its bound him in are difficult to break, and Ryou knows that he cannot do so.

It progresses slowly, but Ryou becomes accustomed to living with his greatest fear as a walking, physical thing that can harm him now even more than it could before. He does not ever grow to be all right with the arrangement, or to accept it as anything other than something over which he holds no control. Since the spirit showed up, it seems as it he has even less control than usual, through the physical existence of a body that is now solely his own argues against this.

First he attempts to wean himself from the safety of his room. It is easy to do when he moves into rooms that are void of the spirit, but once it enters, Ryou has to fight known the impulsive urge to get as far away as possible. Most of the time he doesn't. But he gets better.

The spirit does not know how he came to reside outside of Ryou's body. This is the topic of the first conversation they have when Ryou is calm enough to remain beside him to have one. He says that he felt a powerful surge of power flow through the Ring, and then he was beside Ryou in the bed, feeling more human than ever before. Ryou does not understand how this could happen himself, and thinks again about calling Yuugi for any answers he may have. He does not mention this of course, because he is certain that whatever the spirit's reaction to the suggestion, it will be bad for him. He never does call Yuugi either. He does not want to put his friend in harm's way, but he also wants to continue this, whatever it is, and figure it out for himself.

00000

There comes a time when he realizes that he is not afraid. The spirit has been with him for almost three weeks now. Gone are the days of hiding in the bathroom. They are a memory now, still never too far from Ryou's brain should the need for such fear surface, but now he is able to exist in the same room as the spirit. Now he does not jump when he hears footsteps, or a door open, and search for the easiest means of escape.

The realization is not a startling one, and it does not set off any chain reaction of thought. It comes to him as he is sitting in his living room and watching television, an activity he used to do when things were normal. The spirit is nearby; he is sitting in a chair in the same room, presumably watching the same show, though he wears a scowl that Ryou's own lips would never show. Ryou sits and watches and realizes that he is not afraid. He is not comfortable. He does not think that he will ever be comfortable. But he can sleep now and not have nightmares of the spirit coming for him with a knife.

"Do you want to watch something else?"

Ryou's voice is strained—far too polite for casual conversation and betraying his discomfort and unease with the situation.

"This is fine," the spirit responds. He too is uncomfortable with the mundane and the simplicity of all this, and that relaxes Ryou just a bit.

Eventually he changes the channel anyways, stopping on something that makes the spirit scowl a little less than before. The domesticity of the situation strikes him as laughter-worthy, but if he started to laugh now, he's afraid he would be unable to stop. Ryou has relaxed, yes, but the string's still too tight, and one little upset could throw it off.

00000

When the spirit yells for the first time, Ryou breaks down. He finds himself in the bathroom once more.

He's frustrated. Ryou can feel it through their link. He's frustrated because he doesn't know what has happened, and he doesn't know what to do. His goal is the same as it has always been, but he has not done anything about it. So he yells, because that's the only way he knows of how to deal with his problems, even if it doesn't solve any of them.

It's stupid for him to get so upset by it, and Ryou knows it. The spirit is and always will be the same manner of creature that tortured his soul and possessed his body. Even if these past few days have been particularly nice , it was foolish of Ryou to forget that he is still living with a beast, chained for the moment but never tamed. But somehow Ryou did forget this, and when the spirit yelled, it upset Ryou much more than it should have. It upset the balance that had been unperturbed before.

"Ryou."

It's also the first time the spirit has used his name, and this startles Ryou enough that he forgets what he was trying to ignore. He raises his head from where he's buried it between his legs, and maybe his fear ebbs, just a little.

"Ryou, come out of the bathroom."

He does not say that everything is okay now, or that he apologizes. Ryou would never in his life expect to hear such words. But there is something in his voice and in the way he uses his name that makes Ryou uncurl himself and get off the bathroom floor. He is afraid, and he does not want to be yelled at again. When he reaches the door handle, he pauses and lets his fingers linger on the cool metal.

He knows what is out there. His face, his voice, his eyes, warped in that permanent cruel manner. All the same, but not. The spirit will be waiting for him, but beyond that, Ryou doesn't know. There was a time not so long about when he _knew_ he would be punished for showing such fear. Now, he is not so sure. Things are not different, and he is still weary of the creature that wears his form, but they are not the same, either.

Ryou opens the door.

00000

Sometimes at night Ryou feels a twinge of something flow through their link. He sleeps in his own room, and the spirit, generously enough, takes the couch. The link that exists between the two of them is no longer as strong as it had been when the two had existed in one singular body, and their proximity to each other can weaken or strengthen it, depending on the distance.

At night, with the two of them in separate rooms and walls of all kinds blocking them, the link is strong enough to waken Ryou from a deep slumber, but not so much that he can get an accurate reading of the emotion that is flowing through it. It is hazy and indefinite but vaguely familiar, and Ryou thinks in his waking moments upon feeling it that if he tried, he could pry open the shell covering it and figure it out. After he wakens more, he is terrified of this thought, of the idea that he could have ever gotten bold enough to think that the spirit would allow such a trespass.

It is purely by accident that Ryou comes to comprehend it. The link awakens him, and still half-asleep, he wanders from his room into the living room and the kitchen for a drink. The moment he steps foot in the room—the spirit's territory—the wall crumbles, the idea of protection is dissipated, the link breaks open and Ryou is feeling fear—raw, unfettered and terrifying fear—and he wants to scream and cry and run and call for the comfort of his long-dead mother, but he is paralyzed in his fear and can do nothing. And at the center of it all is the spirit; asleep, curled up tightly, trembling.

"Bakura!"

The name—his name—breaks free from his lips before he has a chance to do anything. He has never referred too—or thought of—the spirit by that stolen name, but now it is the only thing on his mind. That and that he must find some way to wake the other, because this is _wrong_. He has never seen the spirit so vulnerable, not even when he was sick. He has never _wanted_ to see him vulnerable. There is a comfort in the strong and the lasting, and even though he has existed as nothing other than a torture for Ryou, he does not want to see or feel the evidence of such stifling fear. He does not want to experience this mortality, to see the flickering of flames and hear the thundering of hooves and to know that there is a little child somewhere who has just witnessed the destruction of his family and all he holds dear. Ryou does not want these memories, this humanity. He does not want these nightmares that the proof that once there used to be something more.

If is fear that motivates him now. Not the pure, unadulterated fear of the spirit's, of even fear _of_ the spirit that he has felt so often in the past. It is fear _for_, and fear of this fear and what it means. But Ryou walks and approaches and puts his arms around this poor frightened being and wakes him from his nightmares.

"It's okay, Bakura. You're safe now."

The words tumble from his mouth without stop or even meaning, eventually. He holds and comforts and the link quiets and the fear ebbs, and both he and Bakura know that something has been broken that cannot be fixed now.

00000

Ryou's cooking is more than a bit lacking, but he feeds Bakura with a happy expression on his face every time. Bakura, for his part, always manages to stomach it. Theirs is an unusual truce even now, but it is a truce all the same, and neither wants to upset the delicate balance of it.

The thing that Ryou finds the most amusing about it all is how easy everything is. It takes some time, but the two of them fall into their own roles. Most of the time they are separate from each other, but Ryou cooks every meal for them both, and sometimes at night they watch television together. Bakura prefers gory horror movies that Ryou has never been able to watch, but to Ryou's perpetual amusement, he is also fond of whatever the latest drama/murder mystery is, and they watch that together. Bakura is surprisingly good at figuring out the plots to these shows, a talent Ryou himself is lacking in, no matter how many times the spirit explains how he deduced everything.

There are still fights, instances where Bakura is unable to control the near-constant anger he harbors and lashes out at everyone and everything, but these do not happen often, and Ryou finds himself nowhere near as frightened as he was in the past. He is almost certain that now Bakura would not hurt him, not on purpose. There was an instance where he gripped Ryou's arm too tightly and left a bruise, but the almost apologetic way Ryou would catch him looking at it sometimes has made him put the memory away. Things will never be easy, but Ryou prefers these days to those of the past, where it was a constant battle. He is fairly certain that Bakura does too. There is something peaceful about the moments they spend together, something neither of them have felt in so long that both are loathe to think about a return to the norm.

00000

Ryou cannot find it in himself to hate Bakura, not after everything he knows the spirit has been through. When the end finally comes, he is unsure of whom to root for.

Of course they both knew it was only a matter of time, even if they had not once spoken of it. The knowledge hangs and looms, as constant as their link. It is only a matter of time, only a matter of time. Bakura has a reason and a mission, one Ryou cannot fully comprehend, for even on this level of union, he is and never will be able to feel exactly what Bakura feels. But he knows that it is something that most be done and accepts it, and when Bakura does confront the Pharaoh, he is by the spirit's side, though he wishes for nothing more than some way to fix everything.

"You have nothing to worry about," Bakura says, almost scathingly. "Whatever the outcome, your life will return to normal."

And it will, but it's been so long since normal, Ryou's not sure he could even appreciate it if he had it. He wants there to be no more fighting, and more than normal, he wants to go back to the way things were just recently. The idea is ludicrous even to him, that he would reject this chance at normality in order to go back to his days spent with Bakura, but it is the truth. There is no way he could tell this to the spirit, and even if he could, it would not matter. They've been on a set track from the beginning, and this in the end things are meant to come to. There will not be any second thoughts, and no one's mind will ever be changed. Ryou will have to accept what will be.

So when the final battle happens, he stands by Yuugi-tachi because he knows there can only be one victor, and even without seeing how Bakura duels, and how close he gets, he already knows who it will be. And when it is all over, he pretends like he does not notice the way eyes as brown as his own meet his for a moment, because all that had happened and all that was is in the past now, and normal holds no room for any of it.

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Kaay, that was it, hope you all liked it! Please remember to review, and thanks!


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